Pretend this is a surgery. Okay. This is Chris Pochiba, a YouTuber
and influencer from the U.S., having his pupils thoroughly examined
ahead of a laser eye surgery halfway across the globe
in South Korea. You may actually have to like turn your head
a little bit because you have a higher nose bridge. - Like turn, yeah.
- Oh I see. Chris is a classic example of a medical tourism patient. In October 2022, the Tennessee resident
accompanied by wife Sarah, opted to seek treatment on foreign
shores for financial reasons. So I had glasses my entire life
and I have always wanted to have Lasik on my eyes. Being here in the states, it was a little pricey
for what I was willing to pay, especially because I could pay $100 for glasses
and they would last me until I broke them. So we started looking into medical tourism
and looking at different places around the world that we could get surgery done and it
turned out to be like a fantastic choice. The medical tourism industry was already
booming before the covid-19 pandemic. Worth more than 70 billion dollars,
millions of patients were spending on medically related costs, cross-border and
local transport, in-patient stay and accommodations. So what's behind such rapid growth in the sector and are there pitfalls individuals
considering this route should be wary of? The earliest origins of medical tourism actually
came at the emergence of civilization itself. David Vequist is a professor at the
University of the Incarnate Word's Center for medical tourism, a private
Catholic Institute in Texas. We have records of travelers,
for example, from Roman times going into what's now known as Turkey,
and places like Switzerland, for balneotherapy or being able to access the hot
volcanic waters that they would find in those locations. The modern equivalent has been driven
primarily through access to information through the internet about various health care procedures
some of which may not be available in your local area, or some which may be at a say a lower cost
or a higher quality somewhere else. This is allowing people to travel not just within
their own countries, but outside of their countries. Actually we started looking at Google reviews
and different options online. We actually had some friends that had family that
lived in Seoul and we asked their recommendations as well. About 70 percent of all medical tourist, health tourists,
wellness tourists, tend to also travel for the tourism. People choose places like Thailand
not only based on the fact that Thailand has very good hospitals
but they also choose it because Thailand has beautiful beaches. More than picking a destination for the surgery,
we sort of put the surgery into the destination. Really because a lot of countries around
the world have the same technology. I mean Lasik's pretty basic at this point
but Korea is known for being very Tech, it's very clean, very hygeneic, very professional. As demand for medical tourism rises, an industry
supporting the journey has cropped up, including healthcare and insurance providers,
websites and brokers. Paul McTaggart is the CEO and founder
at Medical Departures, a medical travel agency based in the Thai capital of Bangkok. I think the key thing that we offer is trust.
We actually go and we visit these clinics. We actually go and we verify the doctor's
credentials with the local regulatory body. We walk with the patient hand in hand
and give them the who, what, where, why and how of going abroad for healthcare. While trust and clinical reputation are
indeed key determining factors, the final decision for many
patients comes down to affordability. The actual surgery itself cost around $2,000
give or take, and here in the states it goes from around $1,700 to $2,500 per eye. All in, we only spend a couple thousand dollars in Korea
and that was with tourisand food and everything. So it was very affordable so pretty much
the amount of money we saved on the Lasik, largely funded the entire trip to justify
having three weeks in Korea.Yeah. According to a pre-pandemic report, published
by global medical tourism guide Patients Beyond Borders, healthcare and prescription costs
in the U.S eat into nearly 30 percent of retirement and pre-retirement incomes. It is no wonder then that Americans
are traveling abroad to the likes of Mexico, Costa Rica, India, and Thailand,
where their average cost savings on treatments like heart operations, joint replacements and
cosmetic procedures are in the range of 45 - 90%. There's really three markets;
there's the what I call the flight value, i.e you're going from your home country
to another country to get less expensive dental or medical care. Then there's the flight to quality; a good example
is Indonesians going to Singapore. And then finally it's a flight to speed. In my home country, the U.K., if you want to
get an orthopedic procedure, you're waiting up to two years, so you can go to Singapore get
thatparticular treatment in less than a couple days. One destination considered a hot spot
for medical tourism is right here in Singapore. With state-of-the-art technology, highly trained
doctors and ample government support, the city-state ticks all the right
boxes for traveling patients. Those that do end up on these shores however,
tend to come from more affluent backgrounds. Some high-profile patients to the country include
Zimbabwe's former president Robert Mugabe and Brunei's Royal Family. Syed Munir Iqbal is Executive Director
of Medi-Connect Singapore, a medical concierge service he runs
alongside his wife, Dr. Saba Iqbal. The business links patients in South Asia
and the Gulf with public and private health care providers in Singapore. Our target audience changed
from one we were trying to get anyone who wanted a second opinion
to one which is a high net worth individual. So we started targeting the banks because that's
where Ubi felt that our market lay. According to a survey of more than 3,000 Americans,
Singapore ranked second, marginally behind Canada, out of 46 medical tourism destinations. The findings were based on the
respondents' assessments of 41 criteria, rating destination attractiveness,
safety and quality of care. We just feel that Singapore has the strength one of
Organ Transplant is the key area that we want to focus on, Oncology is the other one, because there are centers of excellence here. Third area is Orthopedics; knee surgeries, spine surgeries.
Cardiology is the other one. Singapore is really a hub when it comes to
private banking and wealth management and that's where the premium value
at parity price came in. While the medical tourism industry has been thriving,
it's also encountered some serious obstacles. The biggest impediment to the sector's growth
came with the arrival of the pandemic which ground international travel and,
by extension, patient inflows to a halt. So three years we could not manage to get
even a single patient into Singapore, so anything that was elective would
need to be put on a back burner for a while. But now that it is opening up ,
we are starting to see some inquiries coming in again which gives us the comfort that
we can bounce back strongly. The only market that saved us, that
stayed open during all of covid, you obviously know the dramatic lockdowns
that were in Singapore; those didn't exist in Mexico. Americans wanted to travel and Mexicans
were willing to let them come regardless of whether they had
masks or vaccinations. A third to a good 40% of our competitors and clinics,
doctors and dentists that focused on international patients just disappeared and they went and
pivoted to focusing on domestic patients. And medical departures too was forced to streamline its operations. We actually came back with less people
and made more revenue than 2019. As you're seeing the inflation at the pump, at the
grocery store, you're also seeing at the hospital. You're seeing the cost of health care in these markets
like Australia, Europe, the Americas go up faster. The price of medicine and dental care has
gone up and we've been a benefactor of that. At the height of the pandemic, many health care systems
around the world found themselves overwhelmed and ill-equipped to handle an
unprecedented volume of covid-19 patients, resulting in delays for non-essential surgeries. In the U.K., a record 7.1 million people were
waiting to begin treatment at public hospitals at the end of September 2022, prompting many Britons
to seek routine medical care abroad. A geopolitical issues and the incredible malaise
that is affecting the world in terms of the economy, when you combine all these together, it is a positive trend
for medical tourism and health tourism globally. Medical procedures overseas
can be tricky even for the wealthy. In 2011, a Singapore surgeon was accused of
overcharging the sister of the Queen of Brunei, a hefty 20 million dollars for
medical services provided over 110 days. Often times, medical tourists have no or limited
legal recourse if there are surgical complications. Medical tourism around the world is kind of what
we call in the United States, a wild wild west. There's very few regulations that cover International travel. Despite its shortcomings, however,
medical tourism remains a viable alternative for individuals who are underinsured, looking to save money,
access better quality care and experience shorter waiting times. The mere fact that I had to keep my eyes open
while they were operating on me and watching them do that, kind of freaked me out but honestly,
the clinic was so helpful in making sure it was calm, and then 10 minutes later it was done.
It was very painless. Could you read any alphabets? I think that's e, v, o, t, v. So right now, your vision is 20/60. Okay. Even better than 20/20. The office didn't feel like a typical hospital
in the states, it actually felt more like a spa, so they had trees in the office, and I think
they had like a waterfall sound machine and it was just very peaceful. Getting something done out of the States
can be a little daunting, and scary and it's really just a mind game.
I would do it again in a heartbeat.
